The present invention relates to portable computing devices and Multi Function Printers/Products/Peripherals (MFPs). More particularly, the present invention relates to portable computing devices and MFPs that allow for the automatic copying of documents displayed by portable devices.
The use and proliferation of portable computing devices has become widespread. In particular, there are a number of small computing devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), smart phones, tablet computers, digital cameras, video games and laptop computers that include electronic display devices. These display devices allow the user to interact with the device using a pen or stylus and provide a display for presenting information and inputting command selections. The size of such displays is ever increasing, making documents, images and video more viewable and common place. For example, a prior art system includes a pen or stylus and a computing device. The computing device comprises a touch panel of a conventional type that has a display and a touch sensitive input.
However, one particular problem for such portable computing devices is that it is very difficult to transfer data from the portable computing device and have it printed by a photocopier or MFP. If a user is viewing a document on a tablet personal computer, for example, it is very difficult to print pages displayed by that device on a photocopier. One method of the prior art for printing out a document displayed by a tablet personal computer requires: first establishing a network connection, then installing a print driver for the photocopier upon which the document is to be printed, and finally sending the print command and the document from the tablet personal computer to the photocopier. This process is time consuming, often requires repeated attempts, and requires significant user input and time. It is only made even more difficult because establishing a network connection is a manual process often requiring several input steps by the user. Printing also presents a security risk because the document to be printed may contain sensitive information. The user must somehow ascertain that the printer that appears on the network is indeed the printer which is physically nearby.
Another equally difficult method of the prior art for printing a document displayed on a tablet computer that also introduces security issues is to: transfer the document from the tablet computer to a networked computer connected to the photocopier, open the document on the networked computer, assuming the networked computer has an application that can access and display the document, and print the document using the networked computer.
Finally, the user of the tablet computer could employ a completely manual process to have the document photocopied. For example, the user could display a document and select a page for display by tablet computer, place the tablet computer face down on the platen of the photocopier, press the copy button of the photocopier, remove the tablet computer from the platen, select the next page for display by the tablet computer, and then repeat this process for every page in the document.
Thus, there does not exist in the prior art a method for an MFP to easily and automatically copy documents from the display of the portable computing device.